CAMPAIGN ’88 : In a Word, It’s Dull

This year’s presidential campaign has made little contribution to the English language, editors at Merriam-Webster dictionaries say.

“It’s been dull,” said senior editor James G. Lowe of Springfield, Mass., whose lexicographers have been keeping close tabs on campaign rhetoric in hopes of finding new words.

Since the days of “caucus,” an Algonquin Indian term that entered the political vocabulary in the 1760s, and down through “mugwump,” “power broker,” “suffragette,” “smoke-filled rooms,” “arm-twisting,” “wheeler-dealer” and “dirty tricks,” national politics and particularly presidential campaigns have been a rich source of new words, he said.

Although the candidates have revived some old terms, such as “limousine liberal,” coined by Mario Procaccino during his 1969 campaign against New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay, they have come up with little new.

With only a few weeks of the campaign left, Lowe sees only “scam” used as a combining term--as in “Iranscam,” “Contrascam,” “debatescam”--as enduring and “pastel patriotism” as a possible starter.

According to one version, “pastel patriots” were what the Republicans called the Democrats for decorating their convention arena not in traditional red, white and blue but in hues that looked red, white and blue on television.